that granted her marginal protection would turn forces and present renewed hazard. If she wrecked or ran aground, no man aboard held false hope. To be stranded ashore was to die, first run down by tracking dogs, then butchered on the swords of Skannt’s headhunters.
A second galley struck with a thud against a sandbar, this one near enough to savour the chaos as the consternation of her crewmen resounded in shrill oaths across the water. A horn pealed in warning. The ship just behind her backwatered her stroke, then glanced off her exposed side in screaming collision. Oarshafts sheared off, to the cries of crushed men as leaded beech stove their chests like so many rows of burst barrels. Blood painted streaks down the oarports, and the drummers abandoned their beat.
‘Just hope she’s beached hard enough they’ll lighten the chase manning windlasses and kedging her off,’ said the captain, licking salt off his teeth in a bent of incurable optimism.
Of fifteen galleys packed with troops that converged to tear into Shearfast, three left disabled was scarcely a change in bad odds.
‘Well, what good is moping,’ snapped the captain to the crewman who pointed this out. ‘Have to find some joy to cheer about. Not for any stinking galleyman’s fun will I pass the Fatemaster’s Wheel with a stupid, glum look on my mug.’
The pursuit had slowed behind, fleet captains warned by the two crippled vessels to thread the narrow channel with more care; the strike force split off on an oblique angle to flank and then intercept were far enough away that the blurring, heavy deluge had dulled their rapacious outlines.
‘I’d take that squall now and chance the damned reefs,’ confided one crewman to Tharrick above the hissed spray off the waves.
In blind answer, the cloudburst redoubled and drummed the decks silver. For the first moment since the galleys turned their course to give chase, there seemed a faint glimmer of hope.
Then a horn call blared above the thunder of strained canvas. Through splashing spindrift thrown off the forecastle, a shouted challenge hailed the Shearfast. ‘Heave to and surrender all hands!’
‘Over my still bleedin’ carcass,’ cracked Arithon’s game captain from the helm. ‘Old storm’s going to hide us, and those poor harried bastards hard-set on our tail have to know it.’ He yelled for the men at the braces to belay their lines and move forward. ‘Jump lively! I want bearings on every shoal you can see off our bow.’
Even as the pair raced up the forward companionway, a light bolt arced out. It scribed from the rambade of the hindmost galley, a line that unreeled like incandescent wire to a shriek of hissed protest through the thickened fall of rain.
‘It’s the Prince of the West, curse him!’ Shearfast’s helmsman dragged the whipstaff alee in last-ditch, defiant evasion.
The vessel slewed, mired by her yards and too sluggish. Lysaer’s light-cast assault struck the straining canvas of the stern lugsail and seeded a starburst of fire.
The foresail still left whole to draw wind veered the Shearfast off heading to starboard, and stempost and rudder and the timbers of her quarter slammed with a crunch into coral. Sparks showered the deck and spat answering flame from fresh oakum. Then the evil, swollen clouds opened up and unburdened. The downpour unleashed in a thundering cascade and thrashed out the burgeoning conflagration.
Through smoke and white water, the captain leaped from the helm, one arm pressed to bruised ribs. The whipstaff had taken charge upon impact and dealt him a buffeting clout. Half-stunned and labouring, he grunted phrases of blistering invective. Then, above the whining howl of wind and the battering of the squall, he dispatched swift instructions to his men. ‘She’s a loss! No use but to fire her, and damn the weather now. We’ll have to use pitch flares and torch her sorry timbers belowdecks.’
Tharrick stumbled as a crewman blundered into him and shoved the guard of a cutlass in his hand. ‘You’ll need this. It’ll be hand-to-hand when they board us. Do as you like for yourself. The rest of us agree, we don’t fancy being taken alive.’
Appalled to chills through the cataract of water, Tharrick shouted, ‘Ath in his pity! The duke’s men aren’t merciful, but hope isn’t lost. While the hull burns, the storm could still hide your escape.’
The sailhand paused, eyes narrowed with anger. ‘Won’t risk a capture. I’d rather die fighting on open water then running like a dog through the briar.’
‘If you had cover,’ Tharrick broke in, ‘if I gave you the means to delay them, you might row for the beachhead. Claim sanctuary at the hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood and no enemy of Arithon’s could touch you.’
‘Speak your piece and fast,’ snapped the captain, arrived that moment in the waist. ‘We have only minutes. I’ll burn this blighted vessel to her waterline with all of us aboard before she’s risked to enemies as a prize.’
So simple, Tharrick thought; the hoodwink he proposed should be obvious. He steeled his resolve and explained. ‘I was the duke’s man. I wrecked your master’s shipyard. Who could believe I would be here alive, except as Arithon’s bound prisoner?’
‘Right, aye.’ The captain grinned through the stumps of front teeth, chipped in some past scrap in a brothel. His levity faded. ‘Ye’d do this for us? It’s fair risky. The hull’s to be left blazing regardless.’
‘Do it.’ Tharrick forced reason over fear, though his nerves felt dissolved into jelly. ‘Who’s to know my loyalty ever changed? If the duke’s men find me before I burn, there’s every likely chance I can mislead them long enough for the Brotherhood to grant you Ath’s protection.’
‘Right aye, belowdecks we go, then.’ The captain snapped out his rigging knife and slashed off a sheetline for binding the volunteer victim. Like all blue-water seamen, he could tie knots in his sleep. Over his ongoing rattle of orders, and the crackle of pitch flares, and the hellish, drowning pound of rain on wooden decking, Tharrick found himself thrust down a companionway and lashed in total helplessness to a hatch ring over his head.
‘All right, listen up!’ cracked the captain. ‘I stay, and one other. We’ll draw straws to see who bids for shore leave.’
Tharrick voiced an immediate protest, cut silent as the captain yanked the sash off his waist to twist into use as a gag. ‘There has to be a sacrifice,’ he said as he tied off the cloth in desperation. ‘If we leave an empty ship, your place will be questioned. Then they’re sure to mount a search for survivors.’
A brisk hand clapped his shoulder, while the sailhands drew lots for the longboat. ‘Off we go, mate, and Dharkaron avenge.’ The captain threw Tharrick a bright-eyed, fierce wink. ‘We’ll send prayers from Ath’s sanctuary, and me from past the Wheel. Bless you for bravery. It’s grand luck yell need. Ye’ve charted fair course fer bad waters.’
Shearfast’s crewman raced light-footed from the hold. Behind, for cold necessity, they left the whispered lick of flame and a poisonous, pitch-fed haze of smoke. Tharrick coughed. His throat closed and his eyes ran. The thick fumes sickened him to dizziness. He felt as though he were falling headlong through the very gates of Sithaer. Driven senseless by the metallic taste of fear, dazed beyond reason by poisoned air, he did not remember giving way to terrified screams, muffled to whimpers by the gag. Nor did he keep any shred of raw courage as he wrenched like a beast at the rope ties.
Awareness became wrapped in an inferno. Skin knew again the blistering kiss of agony as the red snap of fire chewed through the planks overhead. The thumps of a distant scuffle made no sense, nor the mazed clang of steel, followed by the defiant last shout of the gamecock captain. ‘Kill the prisoner!’
The cry that bought Tharrick his chance for salvation rang through the steel clash of weapons. A fallen body thudded, kicking in nerve-fired death throes. Then a dying man choked out a rattling gasp and slammed through the companionway door, the blade through his chest a glistening reflection doused in fresh running blood.
‘Merciful